I survived. My children survived. We made it through our drive to and from Utah in one piece. I miss my family... but yet it feels great to be home.
Keys to a great road trip with young ones (at least my little ones): movies (Scooby-Doo in particular), fruit snacks, games, dinosaur music (oh my, I know every one of those songs by heart... even backwards, I think), dino felt board, leapster, books, laughter and a go-with-the-flow attitude. Oh, and putting Ryder in the back and out of reach of Cannon helped a ton too.
We made ZERO extra stops en route to Utah. ZERO. No dirty gas station bathrooms for us. Thank you, boys, for having super large bladders and awesome control. I applaud you.
Does anyone else feel like returning from vacation grants a fresh new start on life? Like you're starting over?
General Conference was truly inspring for me, so I'm sure that spured many of my thoughts along our 13 hr drive home. As I drove, I illegibly scribbled some goals on a scratch piece of paper. They read as follows, with some of my thoughts in parentheses, because I couldn't be too detail oriented while driving...
early bed, early rise
scriptures (better regular personal study)
reading (more time with my boys)
learning (consistent, distinguished learning activities for boys)
dinners (better planned, organized, healthy mealtimes)
3 workouts/wk
monday cleaning
tuesday laundry/groceries
wednesday temple/play
thursday activity
friday catchup day - clean/laundry
date night (PLAN!... it can happen, even if it's an uno tournament as Todd falls asleep... hee hee hee, our last "date night")
FHE (take it to the next level)
work (schedule out work hours and stick to them)
photo (I love it. It's important to me. So make it happen.)
service (plan a regular service opportunity for our family)
general conference (study, study, study)
Ensign (read regularly... cover-to-cover)
Friend (help my children LOVE it!)
primary (magnify my calling)
I'm going to start myself on a weekly routine. I have mixed feelings about being so structured... but it fared well for me in the work world, so I'm thinking I might actually find it useful in running our home.
The best part of our drive (besides stopping in Boise and spending a night with our dear friends)? Looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing Ryder and Cannon dancing to music and making silly faces. That made my heart happy.
Looks like I'm going to start working again. Priorities and structure on on top of my mind right now. But things have fallen into place in such a beautiful way for us. The timing couldn't be more perfect.
My heart is full of gratitude. Gratitude for a loving Heavenly Father who answers prayers and is mindful of me and my family. My soul has been bursting with joy and gratitude ever since our return Tuesday evening. Is life easy? No. But we are so very, very blessed.
2 comments:
I love your Friday posts. How fun for you to go and spent time with your family even it meant being a single parent and driving the entire way on your own. Your my kind of lady, Jenny Hanson (uhhh I mean Fairbanks. Am I the only person who has a hard time getting use to my friends having different last names?)
I'm totally with you on the structures days. As much as I love my little boy, I can't wait for him to be old enough for a schedule. We're almost there!
I just might steal your schedule so thanks for posting it! I almost wish I would have cancelled our salt lake appointment the day we visited you. it was seriously way too short. i think of all the questions i wanted to ask you all the time. you're a wonderful, wonderful person Jenny! and i'll be eternally grateful that you invited me over to swim that day i wore my tweety bird swimsuit to your house :)
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